Conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas released a new video on Tuesday that contains several stabs at voter fraud in North Carolina.
One part demonstrates that non-U.S. citizens living in the United States can register to vote by falsely claiming to be citizens — and have done so — and that those illegally registered voters can obtain ballots at polling places.
Public records also show that one of those individuals cast votes in North Carolina in 2008 and 2010.
That part of the video focuses on two North Carolinians who submitted jury duty forms asking to be excused on the grounds that they are not citizens. But their voter registrations appear valid, and state election workers offered their ballots to actors shown in the film.
Zbigniew Gorzkowski is registered to vote in North Carolina, the film shows. Project Veritas acquired his September 21, 2007 voter registration form and provided a copy to TheDC.
But data provided by the Durham County, N.C., court clerk shows that during the past two years — long after he registered to vote — he was excused from jury duty by stating that he is not a U.S. citizen.
According to voting history records presented in the video, Gorzkowski voted in 2008 and 2010.
On May 8 the workers at Gorzkowski’s assigned North Carolina polling place offered his ballot to an actor in the film who gave Gorzkowski’s name while hidden-camera video rolled.
O’Keefe’s investigators called Gorzkowski and asked him if his jury duty-related statement was correct. Asked directly if he was a U.S. citizen, Gorzkowski wouldn’t answer.
William Romero, another registered North Carolina voter, says on his voter registration form that he was born in Colombia, South America but claimed to be a U.S. citizen. His jury duty excusal record, however, shows that he denied being a United States citizen. O’Keefe’s investigators went to Romero’s residence to ask him which of his citizenship claims was correct.
“Are you a United States citizen, sir?” they asked. He wouldn’t answer. Instead, he threatened to sue them if they didn’t turn off their video camera.
Another part of the video shows University of North Carolina officials, when told of a Democrat-friendly election fraud scheme purportedly committed by a student and his friends, encouraged the crime instead of doing anything to stop it.
That part shows an actor, posing as fictitious UNC student “Jason Rainier,” discussing the election fraud scheme with Assistant Dean of Students for Community Relations Dean Blackburn, and with LGBTQ Center Director Terri Phoenix.
Neither objected to the young man’s voter-fraud activity, which he termed “Operation Chaos.”
“I was registered to vote in Ohio and I still am,” the actor told Phoenix, with a hidden camera rolling, “and I registered to vote here [in North Carolina] because there was a voter drive and I thought it was my civic duty to register to vote. It’s the right thing to do and all that. And I voted absentee ballot in the Ohio primary and I actually voted here as well — early voted.”
“Oh, did you?” Phoenix asked.
“Yeah,” the fictional Rainier reaffirmed.
“And hopefully no one will figure that out,” she replied, laughing out loud.
Rainier then explained the breadth of his scheme, which Phoenix thought was genuine.
“I’ve got about 30 friends,” he said. “They all — we all — decided and committed to, once it looked like Romney was going to get the Republican nomination — we all decided to vote for Gingrich in our home state and then vote for Gingrich here in our other home state of North Carolina.”
“You’re not going to tell anyone, will you?” Rainier then asked Phoenix.
“Oh hell no,” Phoenix responded. “Are you kidding me?”
Phoenix advised Rainier that in the event his scheme was ever discovered to “just plead ignorance.”
UPDATE: ThinkProgress has proven Gorzkowski lied on his jury duty forms as he is, according to the left-wing blog, a U.S. naturalized citizen.
UPDATE II: ThinkProgress has also now proven that Romero became an American citizen in early 2011, after he was excused from jury duty for claiming to be a non-citizen but before registering to vote.
